The application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technology in the medical field has been exclusively in the form of the well known magnetic resonance imaging, which provides images of a living body and/or spectroscopic information on the material constituents of parts in the living body. The magnetic resonance imaging is provided by constructing an array of NMR signals generated under a constant external magnetic field with gradients in three orthogonal directions by using a computer that identifies the intensity of the NMR signal originating from each voxel unit where three planes respectively perpendicular to the three orthogonal directions with gradients intersect and a computer builds an image by assigning the intensity of NMR signal to the voxel unit generating that intensity for all voxel units arranged in an array. As different elements of nonzero nuclear magnetic parity emits NMR signal at different frequencies under a given constant external magnetic field, the intensity of the NMR signal generated under a specific transmitter frequency corresponding to an atomic element species provides a measure of the abundance of that atomic element in the part of living body that is represented by the array of voxels. As a consequence, the magnetic resonance imaging machine operating in a form of a frequency sweep mode provides spectroscopic information on the constituents of a part of the living body. The modern magnetic radiation imaging machine is a wonderful tool that deserves to receive all the credits in technology and all the benefits fo financial reward. The only set back with the modern day magnetic resonance imaging machine is the extremely high cost and the heavy and bulky structure, which prevents magnetic resonance technology from being used on a very wide and extensive demographic distribution.
The principles of nuclear magnetic resonance can be applied to medical fields in other ways in addition to NMR imaging and spectroscopic analysis. More than ninety percent of living body is composed of hydrogen bearing molecules. Different molecular matters, i.e., water and various organic matters with varying degrees of saturation in fats, have different values of the relaxation time (particularly the spin-lattice relaxation time). By analyzing the intensity of the NMR signals generated from a localized part of the living body in the domain of relaxation time, the relative constituents making up that part of the living body can be determined. For example, the existence of abnormal amounts of water and fat, unsual masses of tissues, etc. as well as unhealthy proportions of matters comprising different parts of the living body, can be detected and scrutinized. In order to implement this concept of nuclear magnetic technology in medical application, firstly the transmitter-receiver units of the NMR package must be packaged in a compact and structurally detached form in such a way that it can be placed on the specific part of the surface of a living body to generate and receive NMR signal from the specific localized part of the living body and, secondly operating principles must be discovered and implemented that detects the intensities of individual components of NMR signals corresponding to different values of the relaxation time. It is also desired to device a method that generates and receives NMR signals exclusively from different parts of the living body having varying distances from the skin of the living body where the NMR transmitter-receive unit (NMR-scope) is located.